Presidential election showed us bigotry is alive and well in America

After a hate-filled presidential campaign ripped the scab from the wound of American bigotry, we stand as an injured nation. The losers of this election will spend the next few months pouring salt into that already infected sore. Then they will spend years pretending not to know how it came to this.

In this, the first presidential election since the U.S. Supreme Court cynically scuttled the Voting Rights Act and allowed states with histories of racism to again enact new voting laws without federal preapproval, we’ve learned many lessons. Among them is this one: Chief Justice John Roberts was wrong when he reasoned that racism was far less prevalent now than it was in the past.

“Our country has changed,” Roberts wrote in the 2013 majority opinion that declared a portion of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. “While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”